


How To Change The World Without Taking Power

by shellcollector



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And they're communists, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, It's in London, and people have bad families because it's Éponine and Cosette, this is basically fluff though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5473376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellcollector/pseuds/shellcollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Les Miserables winter holidays exchange 2015. Prompt: "The guy Eponine's been in love with for years brings a new girl to the meeting who's pretty obviously not into him. Eponine takes it upon herself to make sure Marius knows Cosette is off the market.</p>
<p>Basically fake dating but with lesbians. (To clarify, I don't want any Marius-bashing. He just misread some signals.)"</p>
<p>  <i>“Hullo everyone,” says Marius, who doesn’t seem to realise that Combeferre was in the middle of speaking. “This is Cosette. She’s really interested in some of the group’s ideas.”</i></p>
<p>  <i>Éponine can see from the little glances everyone’s shooting each other that she’s not the only one wondering what exactly ‘the group’s ideas’ sound like when they’ve passed through the Marius Pontmercy filter. There’s a distinct possibility that the new girl is dangerously bananas.</i></p>
<p>  <i>One thing that’s more of a distinct reality is that the new girl is dangerously beautiful.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arokel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/gifts).



He’s probably not even coming today. She’s pretty used to this feeling by now, or should be. He’s probably not coming because he hardly ever comes. Sometimes she thinks maybe she bottled out by not stepping in to make the case for some of Marius Pontmercy’s more bizarre political views, just so that he felt like it was all right to be there. Then she reminds herself of how hard she’d racked her brains trying to find some defence for his weird attachment to the Soviet Union, one that doesn’t involve Marius’ poor idealistic dead dad and the handful of black-and-white photos of him carrying hammer and sickle flags in the eighties. Then she gives up.

Anyway, on the days when he does come, she’s on edge the whole evening. Half of it is wondering whether he even realises she’s there, half of it is waiting for him to say something new to make people’s faces freeze up with confusion. She knows for a fact that Courfeyrac has sat down with him and run through the difference between the _workers_ owning the means of production and a _totalitarian state_ owning the means of production, and she knows for a fact that Courfeyrac was really sweet about it because he always is when he’s not burning things. She also knows that Marius spends far too long alone in his room Thinking to be susceptible to reasoned argument.

And the fact is she finds it really beautiful, the way he sets himself to the task of believing. She’s seen the stack of library books he used to convince himself that every single report of Stalin’s atrocities was the product of biased reporting and capitalist propaganda, and when she saw it, all she wanted was to be inside his reality distortion field. She wanted to see the world twist around her, to feel this gravitational pull that could bend light and time.

She wants that more than anything, but she’s stuck in this reality, this time. And maybe, sometimes, she’s not even sure if it’s him she wants or his crazy, if she just wants to catch whatever he’s got so that she can remake her own world into something close to bearable.

He’s probably not even coming today. She can convince herself of that at least. But maybe not very well, because when he does turn up, an hour after the meeting officially starts, she’s not exactly surprised. What does surprise her is that he’s not alone.

 

“Hullo everyone,” says Marius, who doesn’t seem to realise that Combeferre was in the middle of speaking. “This is Cosette. She’s really interested in some of the group’s ideas.”

Éponine can see from the little glances everyone’s shooting each other that she’s not the only one wondering what exactly ‘the group’s ideas’ sound like when they’ve passed through the Marius Pontmercy filter. There’s a distinct possibility that the new girl is dangerously bananas.

One thing that’s more of a distinct reality is that the new girl is dangerously beautiful.

She’s blonde (of course she is, thinks Éponine) and sort of soft looking, and her hair’s asymmetric, half shaved half down to her right shoulder, and she has tattoos of butterflies on her hands, and she has this way of moving that’s -  
This is a fucking disaster.

The new girl’s politics are surprisingly sound, which is why it’s weird that Marius is agreeing with everything she says. Right now she’s talking about service workers and how old-school Marxism discounts labour that doesn’t have a tangible product and how this leads to a dangerous attachment to the factory-floor model of organising. Marius is just nodding along, and occasionally adding in little arguments of his own, surprisingly lucid arguments considering he must have come up with them in the last five minutes.

It’s not really weird that Marius is agreeing with everything she says. It’s completely un-weird. It’s the least weird thing that has happened all day.

Éponine can’t help the cold in the pit of stomach as she sees this, because naturally she’s imagined herself in that position, except when she imagined it, it was more of a folie à deux, Marius making her believe six impossible things before breakfast, turning her Dad into a real Antifa hero and her Mum into someone who loved more than the idea of daughters and her life into not a fucking joke. This is… not what’s happening to Cosette, she’s pretty sure.

“And if you ignore the reality of emotional labour, which is not a new phenomenon, look at what servants were always expected to do - if you ignore that, then you miss the fact of the workers’ having always been alienated from their own bodies, from their own felt sense of the world around them.” Cosette has a high, quiet voice. Kind of posh, but less rich kid posh than nice girl from the 1950s posh, like she’s stepped out of a very genteel time capsule. She speaks like she’s not trying to make people listen to her, but also like she’s not frightened that they won’t.

Marius nods. “And of course there’s there are really gendered implications to that, because a lot of the kinds of labour we’re talking about, service work in particular, has so often been coded as feminine. Of course female factory workers were always crucial to the development of the traditional labour movement -”

“- well, yes, look at the matchwomen’s strike and how that led directly to the dockers’ actions a year later and the development of the modern union movement.”

“- exactly. But then if you lose sight of this other side to labour you end up not exploring the connections with feminism and the fact that ultimately bodily autonomy and workers’ autonomy are the same thing and you also break the connection to housework - ”

Cosette’s eyes are lit up. “- as well as losing the chance to organise workers who are female or nonwhite or both, who have always been more likely to be working in way that’s physically diffuse, and then in the twentieth century as the old factory-floor model breaks down even for white men, if you act as if service work isn’t really work then you lose most of what’s currently -”

They’re finishing each other’s _arguments_. Éponine’s really awestruck by the sheer mind-meld that this implies. Does Cosette know that a week and a half ago Marius was still trying to justify the KGB?

Cosette moves her hands around when she talks, a soft fluid movement, an undulation of the wrists, and it looks like the butterflies have taken flight and are filling the air with wings.

 

Éponine takes refuge at a table with Grantaire and Courfeyrac.

“How long has this been going on for?” she asks.

“Oh, forever,” says Courf. “I mean, they only actually talked about three days ago but she’s the reason Marius started ironing the shirts he wears to go to the municipal library.”

“Have they, you know -” She shouldn’t be asking this. She really shouldn’t be asking this.

“Nah. I don’t think that’s even on the cards.”

“Of course not,” says Grantaire. “Physical union would debase this marriage of minds. They met each other in utopia - which is to say, the library, that most utopian of institutions - and they’ll live out their lives in the no-place of dreams and pure ideology. The body itself is a political construct, so why would they settle for intermediaries? Why not reach straight for the superstructure itself, for the World-spirit which reaches its consummation in the dialectic of their thoughts?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian,” says Courfeyrac.

“Well, fuck,” says Grantaire.

“Some people just like talking about politics without it being code for deep emotional and physical longing,” says Courfeyrac.

“Fuck you,” says Grantaire.

Éponine doesn’t have words.

 

It’s pretty difficult getting the opportunity to talk to Cosette on her own, because Marius has glued himself to her. He even follows her to the counter to order a coffee, almost making it look natural. When she watches them carefully, Éponine can actually see that yes, all the moving-millimetres-closer and dewy-eyed-gazing is coming from Marius’ end, and maybe Cosette isn’t being prim and proper so much as genuinely, unbelievably not interested.

She takes her chance when Cosette goes to the loo. It’s not particularly smooth but what Éponine’s learned is not to value style over results. She follows close after and catches Cosette before she makes it into the stall.

“Hey,” she says, softly, with a hint of embarrassment but not too much. “I’m really sorry, you don’t have any tampons, do you?”

“Oh,” says Cosette.

“Yeah,” says Éponine. “I know. Stupid of me. And this meeting’s not exactly… well, it’s a bit unbalanced.”

“I noticed,” says Cosette.

“Sometimes Musichetta comes,” says Éponine. “She’s going out with Bossuet and Joly.”

“Both?” Cosette’s smile is a really, really nice smile, goddammit.

“Yeah, they’re a sweet little unit. I don’t think she’s as into this stuff as them, maybe she finds it off-putting, I don’t know. I’m just, you know, I think they see me as one of the guys, at this point, probably makes things less awkward.”

“Anyway I’m really sorry,” says Cosette. “I use a cup.”

Éponine’s lost for a minute, then gets it. “Like, a Mooncup?”

“Yes, only it’s a different brand. They come in all sorts of…” the hands start to flutter again, no doubt illustrating the different sizes and shapes in which vaginas come. Oh god.

“That’s cool,” says Éponine, who could really do with some of Marius’ mysterious eloquence right now. “Less waste. Better for sea creatures.”

Cosette laughs. Her teeth are so small they don’t quite touch each other. And her face is so open and friendly that it doesn’t feel like they’ve just met, not at all.

“I probably should,” says Éponine.

“The coffee here’s nice,” says Cosette. “And I don’t think it’s a good idea to avoid places with a gender imbalance. That way they stay imbalanced.”

“Yup,” says Éponine. “We need to infiltrate.”

“Fuck infiltration,” says Cosette. “We need to stage a takeover.”

Éponine really doesn’t know what to do with Cosette swearing, with that mouth, in that voice.

“Also, I think there’s a machine on the wall,” says Cosette. “Selling tampons. And condoms and - are those toothbrushes?”

“They’re weird little brushballs you chew on,” says Éponine, who should have remembered the machine on the wall in the toilet of this café she’s been a regular in for the last three years.

“That’s a very unnerving concept,” says Cosette.

“Sorry, um, yeah, I didn’t have a pound coin,” says Éponine.

“Well, that’s all right,” says Cosette as a smile brightens her face. “I do.” She looks so incredibly pleased to be able to help.

“I just have my card with me today.”

“You can pay me back at the next meeting, if you like” says Cosette. “Anyway, I’m awfully sorry but I sort of need the loo.”

Éponine buys a packet of three tampons from the machine, because she has to now, and she locks the stall door and sits on the toilet seat and stares at the little cardboard box and thinks, not for anything close to the first time in her life, about the fact that she’s a bad person.

 

Cosette and Marius come to the next meeting, together, of course.

“Exactly how much have they been hanging out?” asks Éponine.

“A lot,” says Courfeyrac. “Completely chastely, because Marius has no idea how to actually make a move, which means she can’t actually turn him down either.”

“If she’s really not into him -” says Éponine

“I think he’s unintentionally got her backed into a corner,” says Courfeyrac. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing deliberate about it. But he’s so friendly and she’s so…”

“Nice.”

“Yup.”

Éponine’s stomach is turning over for about a million reasons. “And they are, in fact, having proper conversations, which she can’t pretend she’s not enjoying.”

“Yup.”

“And she doesn’t have it in her to make up an excuse to leave or even not turn up to things.”

“Nope.”

“Jesus,” says Éponine. “This is a hostage situation. Why hasn’t she just come out to him?”

“Oh, she has,” says Courfeyrac. “Repeatedly. How do you think I know?”

And Éponine can picture the conversation, the multiple conversations, with horrible clarity. She’s had the experience of trying to convey information to Marius Pontmercy when it was information he didn’t want to have. This is the problem with the reality distortion field. Once it’s in place, it’s fucking impermeable.

Éponine remembers, with a stab of guilt, the long rambling conversation she engineered while Cosette was probably dying for a wee. At least Marius doesn’t mean to do this. He never means anything.

That’s when she realises she has to fix the problem. It’s also when she realises how to fix the problem. And that her motives here are, for once, completely pure. Because she can only think of one way to get Cosette out of this little situation, and it means putting the final nail in a coffin she’d hoped to leave just the littlest bit unsealed. Despite the fact that everyone’s been complaining about the stench of that rotting corpse for oh, about three years.

 

She has to get Cosette on her own again, which means she has to follow her to the loos again. And since it’s been a week and she doesn’t fancy pretending to have a period so protracted it might be medically dangerous, she has to use a different approach.

“I still owe you that pound,” she says.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” says Cosette.

“I don’t have it with me,” says Éponine.

“I really don’t mind,” says Cosette. “I’m just glad I could help you out.”

This part didn’t actually need to be a private conversation, and they both know it.

“Listen,” says Eponine. “I don’t like not being upfront.”

This is a bare-faced lie.

“I might,” says Éponine, “know about your uh, the problem you’re having.”

Cosette looks panicked, but maybe she’s just afraid she’s going to wet herself.

“Shit,” says Éponine, “Why don’t you urinate and then we’ll have this conversation.”

“No,” says Cosette, very firmly. “What problem is it you’re talking about?”

“The - uh- look, you need to know something about Marius. He really is that oblivious. He’s really sweet, he just lives in his own little made-up world pretty much all of the time.”

“Yes,” says Cosette. “I think I’ve realised that.”

“And he is never - I mean never - going to give up on this if you don’t send him an incredibly clear signal.”

The pain on Cosette’s face is awful to look at. “I thought I had!”

“You probably have, look, this is really not your fault. ‘Incredibly clear’ just doesn’t mean quite the same thing where Marius is involved.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“The way I see it you have two options.”

Cosette nods, looks attentive, and Éponine suddenly has this really clear mental image of Cosette in school, solemnly taking notes, handing in all her homework on time with the title underlined twice in contrasting pen.

“The first option,” says Éponine, “is to sit him down and tell him that you understand, although he has never explicitly stated it, that he is sexually interested in you but unfortunately you are not in the same position vis-a-vis him, making it impossible for any physical or indeed significant emotional connection between the two of you to take place.”

“Ok, ok, right.” Cosette looks miserable. They probably both know that this conversation would most likely end with Marius doing something idiotic, like sitting with his head propped up against a tree for four hours, or running away to fight for the Zapatistas.

“The other option is to be in a relationship.”

Cosette goes really quiet. Then she says, “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” says Éponine. “I’m just being straight with you, here.”

Cosette starts to giggle. Éponine takes a minute, then starts to giggle. For a brief time it seems like the funniest joke in the world.

Then Cosette says, “Look, I’m seriously likely to wet my pants, here. Can you wait a minute?”

Éponine waits, tries not to listen like a weirdo. In the end she washes her hands, just to have something to do.

When Cosette comes out she’s become very solemn again. “From what you say,” she says, “I’m royally fucked.”

“I’m just laying it out like it is,” says Éponine.

“Because I don’t know whether I’m even capable of the first thing.”

“Yeah,” says Éponine. “The first thing is kind of hard, and he’s not going to make it easy for you.”

“But the second thing - well, the problem is that I’m not in a relationship.”

“Right.”

“Not even for want of trying,” (which, Éponine thinks, seriously? How is that possible?) “just, I’m not seeing anyone at the moment and I don’t see that changing quickly, particularly with a guy following me around who thinks we’re maybe married now.”

“You raise genuine concerns,” says Éponine.

“So what do I do? Really, what do I do?”

“You could disappear off the face of the planet,” says Éponine. “But then again, maybe don’t do that. I think he might call INTERPOL and then jump off a bridge.”

“Is he not going to do that if I’m in a relationship?”

Éponine doesn’t know how to explain how she knows that Marius will react differently if Cosette’s in a relationship. She just does. “He’ll take it better,” is all she can say.

“Oh god.”

Éponine lets the silence hang between them before she makes her final move, the one she’s been maneuvering towards since before this conversation even began. “Thing is,” she says, “you don’t need to actually be in a relationship. He just needs to think you are.”

“Like, a made-up person? Someone he’s never met?”

“I think he’d need to meet them. Just so that he couldn’t convince himself you were using an especially elaborate metaphor.”

“Well, how am I going to find myself a pretend girlfriend? That’s probably harder than finding a real one!”

And Éponine still cannot believe that Cosette finding a girlfriend isn’t somewhere around the falling-off-a-log level of difficulty, but she doesn’t have time for that argument right now. Right now, she has an agenda.

“I’ll do it,” she says.

“What?” asks Cosette.

“I volunteer,” says Éponine. “I volunteer as tribute.”

“Oh my goodness,” says Cosette, “Why would you do that for me? You’ve only just met me.”

“I literally owe you.”

“You owe me a pound.”

“Yeah, well, compound interest. Capitalism’s an awful thing, someone should do something about that. Also, Marius is my friend and this situation is literally painful to watch. I think fake going out with you is the best way for this to end with minimal pain to all parties.”

“Ok,” says Cosette. Then she visibly girds herself up and says, in her best fifties schoolgirl voice, “Well then, how do we do this?”

“To be honest,” says Éponine, “We’ve been in here half an hour. They probably already think we’re either having sex or we’ve died.”

“So, what? We come out holding hands and kissing each other?”

“I think that should do it,” says Éponine. She feels oddly cheery. She’d thought this would be a harder sell.

“All right,” says Cosette, and takes Éponine’s hand. Cosette’s fingers are very, very soft, and Éponine looks down to see the butterflies and up at Cosette’s face and as they stride out of the toilets and head straight for the kiss she comes to a horrible realisation.

She should never, ever try to convince herself that she’s doing something genuinely selfless. Not even when it looks, on the surface of it, like that’s the only possible interpretation of events. Because Éponine’s badness is a deep thing, it’s been bred and trained into her, and it acts without her even knowing it. It’s hungry and horrible and fucking hell, she’s kissing Cosette and Cosette’s mouth is small and sweet and gorgeous, and Cosette’s making these little quiet squeaks, and Éponine thinks from the corner of her eye she can see that Marius is maybe crying but she just. Doesn’t. Care.

Not even a tiny bit.

Because that’s the way she is. She’s not a good person. She should remember that.

 

They walk to the station together.

Cosette kisses Éponine, just in case anyone’s still watching, then says (which, it was coming, it was inevitable) “So, how long do we need to, er,”

“Keep this up?” says Éponine, like a terrible autocomplete.

“Yep,” says Cosette. “I should have asked this before, right? When we agreed to do it?”

She should have asked a lot of things, thinks Éponine, not that she’d have got any truthful answers.

“I don’t know how long,” Éponine says, honest for once. “I didn’t think that far in advance.”

“Gosh,” says Cosette merrily. “We’re terrible revolutionaries, aren’t we? We couldn’t organise a pissup in a brewery.”

Éponine’s not really in the mood to laugh about this. She’s done a terrible, awful thing and she needs to go away and think about what she’s done for a long, long time. Or get drunk. Probably that second one.

“When I’ve worked that one out,” she says, “I’ll tell you. And I will work it out.”

“I should probably get your phone number,” says Cosette.

“Yeah, otherwise it’s going to be a pretty thin ruse.”

“Well, yes,” says Cosette, “and also, we should probably arrive together, next week. And maybe see each other in between. Otherwise it’s really not going to be convincing.”

Éponine types her number into Cosette’s phone, while screaming inside her own head. She watches Cosette walk down the steps into the tube station, while still screaming inside her own head.

“Wait,” says Cosette, halfway down, “Aren’t you coming?”

“I just remembered,” says Éponine. “I have stuff to do.”

 

The stuff she has to do is call Grantaire.

“I have done a really bad thing,” she says, “and I need to get pissed. I ran through my friends mentally and you seemed the right man to assist me in this endeavour.”

“Is this the bad thing I know about?” he asks.

“No,” says Éponine. “You do not know about this bad thing. This thing is much badder than you can even conceive.”

“Child, I can conceive of badness beyond the ability of your mind to endure.”

“This badness, Grantaire, _this_ is beyond the ability of my mind to endure. If I don’t get completely ratarsed my mind is going to completely rip itself apart. I’m depending on you, here.”

“Give me five minutes,” he says, because somehow Grantaire is never more than five minutes away from anything. It’s something to do with his ridiculously central flat, his constant peregrinations, and the fact that he knows London as well as a taxi driver, and not one of those bullshit GPS-using amateurs either. If he hadn’t lost his licence in a series of unfortunate incidents a couple of years ago he could probably be a taxi driver, for real. Actually no, that’s a terrible idea. The fact that it’s not even the worst idea she’s had today is an indication of how bad things are.

She paces, waiting for him, thinking about Cosette’s hair and the way the long part falls over the left side of her face, and the way her right ear sticks out, and the way her neck…

“Penny for them,” says Grantaire, and she jumps about a thousand miles into the air.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, R,” she says. “Not tonight. Just, no.”

“Not deliberate,” he says. “What kind of drunk do you want to get?”

“I want to get stupid drunk,” says Éponine, “by which I mean I want to get drunk on completely idiotic cocktails, the kind where it’s like, rum, glitter and turkey gravy, served in a doll’s head.”

“I know just the place,” says Grantaire, because of course he does.

 

The place is perfect.

“Ok, so how about this one next,” says Grantaire. “It’s a bowl of cereal, except the milk also has vodka in it. And cardamom.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” says Éponine.

“Ah, but the clincher,” says Grantaire. “Actually two clinchers. Firstly, you have to eat it with a spoon. Secondly, the cereal is Lucky Charms.”

“Bring me one,” says Éponine, waving an imperious hand. While he orders, she starts thinking again, which is a mistake. She’s not nearly drunk enough. Her mind keeps flashing back to that sudden moment of realisation. Or, and this is worse, to the moment before, the moment when she thought she was actually doing something good for once.

Grantaire comes back with two bowls.

“Don’t imagine,” he says, “that your hyperbolic generalisation has passed me by. I was simply waiting for the time it would take to pick it apart piece by piece. Is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever seen? I think we can both agree that it is not. You have, for example, seen the Central line at eight thirty in the morning. You have seen the jumpers of Jehan Prouvaire. You have seen the arrangement of my face.”

“I said the stupidest thing I’d ever heard,” says Éponine. “Not seen. That’s, like, a whole different sense.”

She takes a spoonful. It’s horrible and amazing, and her hand-eye coordination is incidentally completely shot. Her chin is covered in vodka milk.

“In which case,” says Grantaire, “I would counter that you have heard the political speeches of Marius Pontmercy, the sneezes of Enjolras, and - please pay attention, because I think this is another clincher - you have presumably heard the words that come out of your own mouth.”

Éponine shakes her head. “Nope,” she says. “You’ve got me wrong. I’m not stupid. I’m fiendishly clever. I’m just. I’m bad. I’m a bad person.”

“Is it not a bourgeois reification of the self to assign moral categories to ones very existence? Is this not this search for an inherent character merely the fossilised husk of the economic need to categorise individuals and corporations by their credit risk, by their employability, by their net worth? Is it an accident that we are naturally drawn to metaphors of wealth when we attempt to describe character, that we reach for the words such as ‘worth’, ‘value’, ‘use’?”

“Honestly I just, sometimes I forget that I’m this bad and it all comes crashing down on me. I’m really evil. It’s in my blood, it really is, and I’ll never get it out.”

Grantaire’s starting to look less convincingly jolly. “‘Ponine,” he says, “believe me when I say this is not a helpful or productive way to think.”

“Right, but sometimes reality’s not helpful and it’s not productive and you just have to accept that you’re really, really horrible.” She’s very drunk now, and all it’s done is focus her mind on this one point.

“Ok,” says Grantaire. “How long has this been going on?”

“I mean on the one hand my whole life and on the other hand since the end of the meeting.”

“Not longer than that?”

“No.”

“Do I -” he looks uneasy. “Do I have to worry about your safety?”

“About my… oh Christ, Grantaire.” She realises, too late, that she picked the wrong person to vent her self-hate to. “I’m fine,” she says, because she really is. She’s just pissed off with herself. It’s nothing really new and nothing this bowl of ridiculous vodka cereal won’t fix.

“Because melancholy isn’t a humour you want to fuck around with, ‘Ponine, really.”

“I don’t think melancholy’s my problem,” she says, because she’s pretty sure it isn’t. “My problem is a lack of self-knowledge combined with an excessive talent for scheming.”

“That doesn’t sound terrifying at all,” says Grantaire, and they get back to working through the stupidest drink in the stupidest bar in this whole stupid city.


	2. Chapter 2

She feels really, really bad in the morning. Sort of grimy all over, so she showers and tries not to throw up. Then she sees all the messages. Five from Courfeyrac, two from Combeferre of all people and she’s just scrolling down to see who the others came from when her phone starts to ring. It’s not a number she knows, but she picks it up anyway, because her instinct is always to live dangerously and she’s too hung over to fight her instinct. 

“Hi!” says Cosette, and, oh shit, this is why some people choose to live safely. “How’s your morning so far?

“Oh, fabulous,” says Éponine. 

“Great,” says Cosette. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. We really need to learn more about each other if this is going to be convincing.”

Éponine sighs internally and puts on her best chipper voice. “Good thinking! See, we can organise anything if we set our minds to it.”

“And I was thinking this morning? Would you like to have brunch?”

This is how far gone Éponine is: she’s hung over, she hates brunch, she doesn’t want to think about this stupid fake relationship, let alone talk about it, let alone with Cosette. And still she says, “Brunch! I hear it’s the most important meal of the day. And as it happens, I know a place.”

 

She’d had an inkling Cosette would be vegetarian, which is why she picked the café that does the poached eggs and avocado Jehan won’t stop going on about. Some sort of lemon salt is involved.

“Oh wow,” says Cosette. “What do they put on this? God, I love avocados. I could eat them every day, I think.” 

She is still beautiful. Éponine had been kind of hoping it was a fluke, just a weird beautiful day for Cosette, but no, her nose is still adorable and soft, and she looks so clean, scrubbed almost. Her skin’s very, very smooth, and her round cheeks get rounder when she chews. Éponine’s trying really hard not to look at her face too much, but below her face there’s Cosette’s gentle rounded body, her jumper with an adorable sloth on the front, her - nope, the face, the face is the safest thing. Or the shoes, which have flowers on them. 

“So, what are we supposed to be telling each other?” asks Éponine. She’s having a double espresso and a large chocolate chip cookie and ibuprofen, because fuck everything and moreover, why not.

“Well, let’s start with how you started going to meetings,” says Cosette. 

“I started going because Marius started going,” says Éponine. “We were next-door neighbours. Funny thing, actually, because it turned out he’d been carrying around this photograph of his dad and my Dad at an antifascist thing in nineteen-eighty-somethingorother. Anyway, he got desperately the wrong idea and thought my Dad was some kind of communist hero.”

“Mm-hmm,” says Cosette. “I can sort of imagine that happening, now.”

Things Éponine has left out of this story: that the photo appeared to show her Dad shielding Marius’s dad from a crazy Nazi; that the photo was printed in the _Daily Star_ ; that her Dad had it enlarged and mounted and displayed it on the wall of his pub and told every single punter a different story about what really happened; that it’s one of the few things her Dad still owns, still framed though the glass is broken.

“Still, though,” says Cosette. “You’re from a lineage of antiracist lefties. That’s pretty cool.”

“Nooo,” says Éponine. “I have no idea what he was doing on that demo but I really doubt that he was there to defend universal brotherhood. Occam’s razor says he was picking pockets. He’s always talking about how people stop paying attention when something dramatic’s going on. He lifted nine iPhones during the royal wedding.”

Cosette’s started to look weirded out, the way people do when they hear too many details about family life chez Thénardier. Bollocks. 

“Anyway,” says Éponine. “How about your lineage? Let me guess, Fabians all the way back to the Domesday Book.”

Cosette shrugs. “I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know how far back the Fabians go?”

“I don’t know anything. I got taken into care when I was little. My Papa adopted me when I was five. In between I lived in a really terrible foster home.”

Éponine’s about to say, “My family used to run a really terrible foster home,” but for some reason she stops herself. It’s like her guardian angel, ie the guy who’s been sleeping on the job for pretty much nineteen years, finally opened a single eyelid. Instead she says, “My little brothers are in care.”

“Oh gosh,” says Cosette. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a sort of child neglect situation, but they figured me and my sister were old enough. Also, my Mum likes girls more. Like, feeds them and everything.”

“Oh,” says Cosette quietly. 

Double bollocks. Does that mean, like, four bollocks or something? She’ll have to ask Grantaire later. Or Joly. Joly would know all about double bollocks, from all conceivable angles. Cosette is looking really sad. Triple bollocks.

“So, your Papa,” says Éponine, which turns out to be the right move. 

Cosette talks about her Papa for a long time, says, “Really, though, I think you’d like him a lot,” more than once - more than twice, more than three times - which is bizarre considering how little she knows about what or who Éponine likes. Then again, Éponine really likes Cosette, and from the sounds of it she and her Papa may not be blood related but are definitely cut from the same cloth. Then again, Cosette doesn’t know how much Éponine really likes Cosette. 

“I don’t know where I’d be without him,” says Cosette. “I can still remember little bits and pieces of what happened before. Not, you know, my birth mum, or anything. But the other place. I remember being hit, a lot.”

Éponine makes an angry sound, and then remembers that she’s been hit, a lot, too. But it feels worse when it’s Cosette. Éponine’s bad and hard and dark inside, but Cosette’s so gentle. Tiny Cosette must have been - and she gets an image in her head, an image that’s too clear somehow, too real. Almost like a memory. 

“And they had this pub we spent all our time in. They had a lot of kids, I think mostly their own. Just hanging around in a pub all day. I remember some of the punters made us drink little bits of beer, then laughed at the faces we made.”

And this must be a feature of pub childhoods, because Éponine remembers this too, except she remembers getting so used to it they stopped laughing at the faces she made and started laughing at her falling over, a baby drunk tripping over her own feet. It’s probably good for Éponine’s liver and overall wellbeing that they lost the pub, even if it’s been really not good in a bunch of other ways. 

“There was a swing outside,” says Cosette. “That was nice, except I mostly wasn’t allowed on it. And a photo on the wall of a man getting punched. God knows what that was about.”

Éponine’s blood freezes, just stops moving and gels into a cold stillness. That’s it, that’s it, oh fuck, that’s the familiarity. It’s not that Cosette’s got a friendly face - well, she has, but that’s not why Éponine feels like she’s known her for her whole life. And Grantaire was fucking right, the bastard, this is a level of wrongness that she couldn’t have begun to formulate five minutes ago. This is so bad. She, Éponine, is so bad. The things she wants to do to Cosette - and this is still very much a present-tense type deal - shift from unethical to possibly illegal. Because they were sisters, sort of, kind of, once, a long time ago. For a few years, when Cosette was Alouette the skinny girl who kept getting hit for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For a few years, before Cosette’s Papa took her away and Éponine’s parents lost the pub and the fostering gig and eventually, ironically, more than half their own kids. 

That’s what her guardian angel was doing, the lovely bastard. He was saving her from Cosette ever realising _this_. 

“Oh gosh,” says Cosette. “I’m so sorry, I should have thought. Your brothers. Look, I bet they’re not anywhere that horrible. This was an exception. There are a lot of really nice foster homes.”

“Anyway, it sounds like you ended up OK in the end,” says Éponine breezily. “Good thing your Papa turned up to save you.”

“You have no idea,” says Cosette, and thank God, she’s never going to stop talking about him, and Eponine just drifts of into quiet reverie while Cosette’s mouth moves and Cosette’s hands flutter around her face and Cosette’s grey eyes shine with feeling.

“Anyway, you’ll have to come around and meet him,” says Cosette. “I’d really like to introduce him to you.”

“Maybe when this whole fake thing is over. Might make it a less stressful encounter.”

“Right.” Cosette sounds, weirdly enough, guilty. “He’s probably had enough worry in the last few days.”

“Oh god, he met Marius, didn’t he?”

Cosette starts to giggle. “He called him a booby.”

“That’s… actually, that’s fair. He is a booby. Bless his booby heart.”

“I really hope he’s not too upset.”

“Oh,” says Éponine, cavalier, “he’ll get over it.”

 

“He’ll get over this, right?” she asks later, on the phone to Courfeyrac.

“He’s not exactly stopped crying yet,” says Courfeyrac. 

“He must have slept.”

“I think I heard him crying in his sleep.”

“But he’ll get over this?”

Courfeyrac sighs. “He keeps on saying that he ‘just wants you both to be happy’. And I’m pretty sure he means it. And I’m pretty sure that means he’s going to have to get over it. So, yes.”

“How long exactly is that going to take?”

“You’ve made a big mess here, Thénardier. I mean, this is probably the best outcome for everyone, but that doesn’t make it any less of a big mess. Just concentrate on actually being happy, because that really is the only way he comes out of this.”

“We need to have a long, happy relationship?”

“I should fucking hope so. You need to make this worth it. I’ve had to run to the corner shop for tissues three times.”

“I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I don’t think I’m ever getting the snot out of our sofa cushions.”

“I’ll buy you ten drinks.”

“Just get on with being happy. Please.”

 

Cosette calls her five times, and she never picks up. Then Cosette stops calling. And for the rest of the week, Éponine concentrates really hard on the mess that’s the rest of her life. It’s weird how focused she can be when she’s trying to ignore something. She cleans her whole flat, starts running again (because she’s starting to accept that running, which she hates acutely, makes her sleep better and just feel better overall). She applies for a bunch of jobs that don’t suck and which she’s not going to get for precisely that reason. She finally reads Volume II of _Capital_.She can go to the next meeting with her head held high, she thinks, and oh shit, the meeting.

She gets a text from Cosette: “I think we should arrive together. That’s if you’re still OK with this.”

Then another text, two minutes later: “If you’re not that’s completely understandable.”

Then another: “You’ve probably done enough. He’ll stay away from me for a bit, maybe give me enough time to think of another strategy.”

Then another, after ten minutes: “I mean I am so grateful for what you’ve done so far. You’re a really lovely person and I would never want you to think I didn’t value what you’re willing to do for your friends.”

Then: “I hope we’re friends.”

Éponine, who’s just got back from her run, replies: “Nah, I’ve spoken to Courf and we might need to marry each other. Meet you by the ticket machines at ten minutes to.”

Then, because it’s Cosette and she can’t help it, she adds: “I hope so too.”

 

Éponine gets there a couple of minutes late, and Cosette looks cold and fed up, waiting outside the station with her hands balled up in a pink scarf that has bunny ears at one end and a fluffy tail at the other. 

“So,” says Cosette, “When do we need to start, you know, kissing? Like, how close to the café.”

She’s changed her tune, thinks Éponine, and, ouch.“We’re probably good until we turn the corner,” she says.

“You know,” says Cosette. “I feel horrible about this.”

Not as horrible as I feel, thinks Éponine, except that might not be true because somehow the bad things Éponine’s done don’t seem to bother her as much as they might. They bother her, for a while, but not all the time or to the point where she’s crippled by it. Another person might have gone mad with remorse fucking years ago. Not her. 

“I just, I hate lying,” says Cosette, which lends some weight to this analysis. One week into this mess, and Éponine’s kind of still perturbed by the fact that she half-consciously executed a sinister plot to manipulate her sortakinda legal sister into making out. And meanwhile Cosette’s in absolute pieces about not being rigorously truthful at all times. 

“Shh,” says Éponine, and pulls Cosette in for a kiss. But Cosette pulls away like a child from a hot stove. 

“You don’t need to do that yet,” she says. “That’s what you said, you don’t need to now.”

“Fine,” says Éponine. 

“I’m so sorry,” says Cosette. “I’m not cross with you, I just feel terrible.”

“It’s fine,” says Éponine. 

They reach the corner. 

“Don’t,” says Cosette, in a small voice. “Just don’t.”

“What if I hugged you?” asks Éponine.

The little smile that follows is a kind of relief. “Ok, yes, do that,” says Cosette. “I need that.”

Cosette’s whole body is round and warm. It’s like she’s made of hug. Éponine can feel the whole world expand and contract as Cosette breathes in and out in her arms. She buries her face in Cosette’s bunny scarf. 

“You’re a nice person, you know,” says Cosette. 

“I’m not,” says Éponine. “But I give nice hugs. It’s pretty easy to confuse the two.”

“Can we hold hands?” asks Cosette. “That’s OK, isn’t it? Holding hands?”

“Sounds pretty convincing,” says Éponine.

So they do. 

 

Éponine was thinking that maybe, possibly Marius wouldn’t even come to this meeting. He’s not exactly a regular, and it’s not exactly going to be a fun evening. But there he is, and she wonders whether Courfeyrac dragged him along forcibly or if he just wanted to see how happy they really were. 

The answer is: not very. Cosette’s quiet, reserved, just sits in a haze of sadness. Éponine doesn’t know how to cheer her up. She knows she should be papering over the cracks, making it seem like a functioning partnership, something she definitely knows how to do after taking masterclasses from her Mum for years. Instead she keeps trying to make Cosette actually happy, something she has no idea how to do. Cosette smiles fractionally when Éponine puts her hands on top of Cosette’s hands, making a sandwich of table-hands-hands. So Éponine keeps them there, even strokes the edges of the fingers a little with the edges of her thumbs. But when Éponine tries to talk about John Holloway, which really ought to do the job, the conversation dies to nothing.

Meanwhile Marius is just staring at both of them. He’s smiling, in a sweet, effortful way, and Courfeyrac’s done a really good job of cleaning him up for the meeting, but his eyes have a raw look about the rims and he’s incredibly pale. And he’s looking at Éponine more than he’s ever looked at her ever, which, fuck him. 

The inside of her head sounds like a swarm of bees, so she does what she usually does, which is run away. To the fucking toilets, because Éponine never finished school, never did GCSEs, and never stopped acting like she's fucking twelve. 

“I need to expel waste products from my body,” she announces, then heads for the ladies. It’s only when she’s there that she realises this is where the bulk of her and Cosette’s emotional connecting has taken place, meaning this place is ruined for her forever. This is a disaster. She’s going to have to start pissing in the McDonalds’ opposite. Her mind is already thinking of excuses - a chip run? Will a bunch of revolutionary Marxists buy that as a thing that happens? - when Cosette comes in through the door. 

“We have to stop meeting like this,” says Éponine. 

“I can’t do this,” says Cosette. “This is wrong and I can’t do it.”

Shit. “Fine,” says Éponine. “I’m not going to talk you out of it, if that’s what you’re worried about. But you need to know that Marius is dealing with this incredibly well, considering it’s him. He usually stops talking to anyone for about three months when he’s undergoing a crisis of faith.”

“I can’t do this because I’ve been lying to you,” says Cosette. 

“What.” says Éponine.

Cosette bites her lip and no no no, she shouldn’t be crying, she shouldn’t ever be crying. Éponine briefly stops trying to process her confusion as to what’s actually happening and starts fantasising about carrying Cosette away to a universe that’s all sweetness and birdsong and baby fucking deer all day long and crying isn’t even allowed. And leaving her there, of course, because that’s not somewhere Éponine could ever belong. 

“I need to be honest with you,” says Cosette. “I don’t believe in lying and I’ve been lying to you and it needs to stop. I’ve been really unfair.”

“No, come on, it’s fine,” says Éponine helplessly. 

“I’ve been lying to you and taking advantage because if you knew I liked you you’d never have agreed to this and that’s a horrible, horrible thing for me to do.”

“What.” says Éponine. 

“Oh god,” says Cosette. “I’m so sorry. You must be so angry with me right now.”

“Can you say that again,” says Éponine, flatly. 

Cosette’s shaking. “I really like you and I liked kissing you and I’m sorry.”

What Éponine wants to do is walk out and not be here. What Éponine wants is to go away until the confusing thing just blows over and everything’s back to the reassuringly awful status quo. But maybe Cosette’s rubbing off on her somehow because she stays and says, “But I really like you too.”

“Oh my goodness,” says Cosette, and her sweet pink mouth just hangs open, and Éponine leans in and kisses it hungrily because what else is she supposed to do. 

It’s all unicorns and rainbows until Éponine realises the other horrible thing. 

“Wait,” she says. “I need to tell you something.”

“Me too,” says Cosette, suddenly solemn.

“When I tell you you’re probably going to be completely squicked out and maybe go to the fucking police.”

“Okay,” says Cosette. “That sounds pretty serious. You go first.”

“Your terrible foster parents were my terrible parents,” says Éponine. “So we’re probably breaking the law or something, and, and - Why are you laughing?”

Cosette’s giggle is the loveliest thing in the world. “I worked that out too,” says Cosette. “I was going to tell you. Isn’t it weird?”

“Weird, but also maybe against the law,” says Éponine. 

Cosette’s still giggling. “Éponine, we’re plotting to overthrow the government. You’ve been in prison - yes, I’ve talked to the others, I know about that. Even if it were against the law, which I’m pretty sure it isn’t, why would we care about that? We’ve not seen each other since we were five. I’m fairly sure there’s nothing actually immoral going on.”

“But you’re so, so -” Éponine’s trying to find words, “so pure. So pure and good and precious.”

Cosette pulls her in, wraps her hands around Éponine’s waist, reaches under Éponine’s tshirt and touches the bare skin of her back. Éponine’s skin is tingling, her eyes are full of sparkles, her heartbeat’s doing something desperately peculiar. 

Cosette turns her head and whispers in Éponine’s ear. “I want to fuck you,” she says, and the thought of Cosette’s hands, butterflies and all, and where they could be, what they could do, well, that makes Éponine lose the ability to construct sentences completely. 

All she can say is, “Now. Please.”

 

When they come out, everyone’s very pointedly acting like everything’s normal and not looking in their direction at all. Even Marius is trying to be subtle about it. 

“Coffee?” asks Cosette. 

“Sounds good.”

“Double espresso?”

“And you’re having a hazelnut latte with extra cream.”

Cosette beams and goes to the counter. Eponine sits down on one of the sofas. Courfeyrac sneaks her a thumbs up. 

“I got talking to a couple of the baristas,” says Cosette when she brings the drinks over and joins Éponine on the sofa. “Matelote and Gibelotte. I think we might be able to get them involved in the meetings. Possibly by changing the timeslot, or else by making it easier for them to participate while still working their shifts.”

Éponine kisses her on the nose. 

“Also,” says Cosette, “You talking about John Holloway is the sexiest thing imaginable. You’re going to have to do it again for me some time.”

Éponine lays her head on Cosette’s shoulder, which seems to have been made to lie upon. It’s like an actual pillow. “We’re undermining capitalism right now by choosing to make each other happy without any transactional exchange,” she says, and Cosette kisses her hair. 

They stay like that for hours, talking, watching as the world’s remade. 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from John Holloway, because I realised as I was writing it that he's the most Cosette political writer ever. I wrote this in ~48 hours, which is a bit mad, because I was a substitute off the bench.


End file.
